


Lunch Date

by salable_mystic



Series: Destinies, earlier and later. [2]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-05
Updated: 2010-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salable_mystic/pseuds/salable_mystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is going to change once again for Cordelia, but she has to make one last visit before it can do so.</p><p> </p><p>(Part 2 of the "Destinies..." series. See the series description for more information.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lunch Date

Cordelia set the tray she was carrying down carefully on the table next to the bed. It was a bed one might well find in any private home, she noted with approval and not one of those hospital beds that came with a large amount of contraptions for keeping patients restrained. Dubauer no longer needed restraints, advances in medical technology over the years had managed to finally put a stop to his seizures, even if they had been unable to help him in any other way. And he was only in bed now, instead of sitting at the small table in his room, because he’d taken a fall when being led around the small hospice garden, the doctors had told her, and his legs were immobilised until the bones finished mending, as he would not stay still and allow them a chance to heal when left mobile. He did not comprehend the concept of broken bones, or healing, and had not for decades.

 

She studied her former Ensign critically, tracing the passage of years – decades – on his face. She’d come to visit him, from time to time, once she’d been able to come to Beta Colony again and the whole mess she’d left behind when, well, _fleeing_ Beta Colony in the wake of the Escobaran War had been sorted out, but it had been some time since she’d last been here, and visiting and studying him like this had become a ritual, one that left her wondering every single time if she had made the right decision, or not. She’d been so young, and so … _righteous_ … back then.

 

Was he aware of the passage of time, of the monotony of years he had spent in one impersonal room after another? She’d been glad when she’d heard that his mother had taken over his care, back when she’d brought her wounded man home, but his mother had died years ago and he was back in a nursing home now.

 

Cordelia sighed.

 

He was looking at her, face expressionless, no recognition sparking in his eyes. He had not recognised her during her recent visits, either, and the doctors had told her that, what little had been left of his cognitive facilities after the nerve disruptor damage was fading away inexorably.

 

Still, he’d been there, at the very beginning, and it had seemed somehow fitting to her that she should come to visit him now, at the end, one last person to say her farewells to. The arch that spanned the time she’d been allowed to spend with Aral delineated by Dubauer at both ends, by no design but her own vain desire for symmetry and closure.

 

“Hello Ensign Dubauer, you’re looking well!” she finally addressed him, voice artificially bright.

 

He had not been an Ensign for a long time now, of course, but it was how she’d always addressed him, and if there was any spark of consciousness left behind that too-blank face, she hoped that the title might somehow connect him to the world around him, with what his life had been like – before. Before being shot by a Barrayaran nerve disruptor. He’d lived more than three times as long again now, _after_, blankly unaware of the world around him, than he had ever gotten to live _before_, and the sheer amount of experiences Cordelia herself had lived through in that same time, from soaring heights to bitterest devastation, made her heart twist in agony, and guilt.

 

“I’ve brought you lunch, and some for me as well, and I thought we might eat together. It is a bit of an idiosyncratic mix, I’m afraid, but I hope you’ll forgive me for the unusual combination. It holds a certain … sentimental … value, you see.” She paused, swallowing hard, while he regarded her blankly.

 

He always regarded her blankly.

 

Once he also might have looked scared or frightened, but had not done so for decades – nothing to scare or frighten anyone, here. Or maybe the part of him that could feel terror had simply eroded over the years, swept away in a never ending sea of daily monotony and sheer, literal, mindlessness. Whatever she had pictured for him – and what _had_ she pictured for him, anyway? – it had certainly not been this … blank existence.

 

She sighed again.

 

Cordelia folded out a lap tray for him and set two bowls on it, then pulled her own two bowls closer to herself on the tray that she had brought in. Dubauer reached for the spoon she handed him readily enough, and began eating from the bowls seemingly at random, without any noticeable change of expression at their contents. She watched him eat and fiddled with her own spoon, suddenly sure that she could not possibly swallow anything around the persistent lump in her throat. She had thought she might breathe easier on Beta Colony than she had been able to do on Barrayar, but such had not been the case. So, outwards it was, she had decided, until she might find her singular self again, amongst places and people she’d never known, amongst places and people that held no memories for her.

 

“I’m here to tell you that I might not be visiting you again. I’m leaving, you see. Beta Colony, I mean. Again. But also Barrayar. The Empire. Everything. And I don’t know when I will be coming back.”

 

_When_, not _if_, though. People, if not things, tied her to Barrayar still, and none of them were ties she would gladly relinquish, not even in all her grief and loss and pain. But she needed the lines that tied her there to slacken for a while, while she learned who she was now; now that she could no longer be Aral’s _Captain_.

 

Cordelia took a deep breath, and fiddled with her spoon some more. “So I am going to slip away, again, although I plan on doing it less violently and with a little more dignity and forethought than last time.” No less furtively, though, for she planned to shed the small travelling circus that even a Dowager Countess seemed to warrant, no matter the protestations of said Dowager Countess.

 

Miles would understand, she knew, and Gregor, too. Mark … she hoped might understand. Everyone else – Ekaterin, Laisa, the twins, armsmen, retainers, godchildren … - she would leave to Miles and Gregor to sort out.

 

Dubauer had finished his two bowls, she saw, while she had been sitting there, lost in thought, her lunch still untouched, the spoon rotating ceaselessly between her fingers. She laid it down wearily, and stood up to put her tray on the side table, then cleared away Dubauer’s bowls, spoon and tablet, and wiped his face and hands of some of the stray bits of food he’d smeared there, before sinking down in the chair again. Dubauer was now staring at the wall across from him, neither interest nor boredom visible in his gaze, and not even his visitor able to hold his mindless attention.

 

She’d come here on a vague search for loose ends that might be tied up, a mental cleaning job of sorts, but whatever she had hoped to find or achieve, she would never find it here, she realized.

 

All she’d found was a blank faced man in his late middle-age, who could supply her with no answers, no matter the questions she might ask. Maybe there were no answers, anymore.

 

Cordelia leaned forward, into Dubauer’s direct line of sight, trying to catch his attention – or whatever passed for his attention, after more than sixty years of living with nerve disruptor damage. Still, his eyes focused on her, and so she reached for his hands and squeezed them hard, her voice only a little unsteady as she said:

 

“Dubauer. Dubauer, if you can hear me, if you are still in there somewhere … I am sorry. I am so very sorry.”

 

He stared at her, unblinking.

 

Cordelia stared back for a while, heedless of the tears that were now running down her face. His attention wandered off again.

 

Finally she sighed, wiped her tears away with the back of her hands, got up, and walked out of the room, out of the hospice, and out of her old life, pausing only to turn at the door to cast one last, pensive look over her shoulder.

 

She left behind the tray on the side table, for one of the male nurses to find and wonder over, uncomprehending. Dubauer, whose mind had known little since a fog shrouded forest on a planet two wormhole jumps away, and nothing for decades now, was of course unable to explain it to him; he had been unaware of the identity of his visitor and the taste of his food, so how should he understand the untouched lunch tray, or the significance of the two bowls, one of oatmeal, and one of blue cheese dressing?

 

 

 

 

THE END

(and a beginning)


End file.
